Archive for photos

The Big Picture has put together another stunning array of photos – this time of the ISS, which turns 10 years old. Click the link below to view all 32 pictures.

This month marks the 10th anniversary of the first launched module of the International Space Station (ISS). The module Zarya was lifted into orbit on November 20th, 1998 by a Russian Proton rocket lifting off from Baikonur, Kazhakstan. In the decade since, 44 manned flights and 34 unmanned flights have carried further modules, solar arrays, support equipment, supplies and a total of 167 human beings from 15 countries to the ISS, and it still has a ways to go until it is done. Originally planned to be complete in 2003, the target date for completion is now 2011. Aside from time spent on construction, ISS crew members work on a good deal of research involving biology and physics in conditions of microgravity. If humans are ever to leave the Earth for extended periods, the ISS is designed to be the place where we will discover the best materials, procedures and safety measures to make it a reality. – source Boston.com

The ISS is backdropped against a cloud-covered part of Earth as the orbital outpost moves away from the Space Shuttle Discovery on August 6th, 2005. Earlier, the crews of the two spacecraft concluded nine days of cooperative work. (NASA)

Google now hosts over 10 million historic Time-Life photos from as far back as the 1750’s to present day. A nifty trick to use Google Image search to only search for those photos is to add source:life in your search query. [viaLifehacker]

With the richness of the web these days wouldn’t it be nice to search for stuff with a better looking user interface? Stop imagining and start using!

I’ve just come across PicLens by cooliris which is a browser plugin for IE, FireFox and Safari that gives you an immersive view of images, photos and videos on various websites like Google, YouTube, Amazon and more.

Searching content providers is easy

It’s a small plugin, less than 2MB in size and once loaded pick your favourite content provider, type in your search as above and get offered a wonderful fully-interactive wall of images.

Yup, it appears that hackers will shortly be able to post pictures on various websites (probably targeting social networking sites) and lure unsuspecting victims to browse a page with the infected picture or GIFAR. This GIFAR (GIF and JAR) will be interpreted by the browser as a normal GIF and displayed but the Java Runtime on the user’s machine will extract and execute it as a JAR file.

At Black Hat, researchers will show attendees how to create the GIFAR while omitting a few key details to prevent it from being used immediately in any widespread attack. – SlashDot News

Yesterday a friend sent me some pictures of “Old” Cape Town which really make you think of how far we’ve come as a city and how things have changed over the years. I was trying to find some “new” photos for comparison and thanks to Michelle and a 4×4 forum member’s flickr photostream here are a few comparison photos – enjoy!